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Friday, January 2, 2009

Two Phases Of Swiftlet Farming !!!


Something that I have just discussed with a blog reader from Kuala Trengganu.

"Harry, when should I harvest those nests? I have about 200 nests so far."

Mr.S the best for you to consider is to look at swiftlet farming consisting of at least two phases.

Phase one before the total number of nests is say 500 nests and Phase two is when the number exceed 500 nests.

Before you have 500 nests, you need to understand that you need to pinch as many young birds from your neighbors as possible. At the same time you also would like to increase the number of young birds multiplying from those nest in your BH.

So for Phase one you only harvest after the birds have used their nests at least two times. Once the second batch of babies flew away you should harvest them and sell them off.

In this way it is a win win situation where your birds got the chance to recycle their nests once and after that you harvest for your return of investments and effort.

Once the total number of nest reached 500 nests, you now can adopt a new harvesting techniques.

You see at this juncture you are not longer interested on those wild young birds but you need to put more focus on your own birds that were brought up in house. You need to make sure that the maximum number of birds that were brought up in the house returned to built their nests in the same house where they were hatched.

So you can now harvest every cycle in total except those with little babies. You can harvest both the empty and those with two eggs.

The most important is the right timing. You need to observed the most appropriate time when the maximum number of young birds have left their nests to feed themselves.

I would assumed that the timing is right when 80% of the nests are empty, 10% are with babies and 10% are with eggs.

So you harvest the 80% plus the 10% with eggs (must be with two eggs). Do not touch those 10% that are with babies.

In this way you can now truly enjoy the fruits of your hard work and at the same time allows the birds to come back and built their new nests for the next cycle. The 10% with eggs, two eggs, will behave the same. They will built new nests to fulfill their objective as a bird.

What happened when the house is totally full?

This will be the Phase number three.

When you BH is totally full, I leave it to you to decide. You may want to harvest every month or every week or even everyday. The house is yours and be my guess.........

No matter how many nests you harvest they will be reconstructed within three weeks.

That's the beauty of having a BH. I mean a successful BH.......

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Harry,
Happy New Year.

I regret to read that when the total nests exceeds 500, you condone the harvesting of nests with eggs.

I think it is fair exchange to birds and men that we remove the nests only after the young have fledged. They give us nests, we give them home. Let the eggs -> babies -> birds. The eggs are not the same as unfertilized farmed chicken eggs.

Anyway, to each his/her own.